Throughout a lot of the creating world, credit score stays the ultimate frontier of economic inclusion. Whereas cellular wallets and digital funds have scaled quickly, formal credit score entry nonetheless eludes hundreds of thousands of customers and small companies.

Based on the World Financial institution, round 1.3 billion adults stay unbanked. In Southeast Asia, a Bain & Co research revealed that eight out of 10 SMEs want financing, but they don’t have entry to reasonably priced credit score.

The reason being easy but systemic: legacy credit score programs are constructed for a unique period.

Conventional credit score programs and scoring fashions fail to seize the realities of recent monetary life, from gig work to micro-entrepreneurship. Consequently, creditworthy people and enterprises stay invisible to lenders, and monetary establishments grapple with methods to serve these segments profitably and responsibly.

That is the place credit score tech emerges as the answer, one that mixes AI, various information, and automatic danger intelligence to construct the digital infrastructure that powers inclusive lending at scale.

Among the many pioneers main this shift is FinVolution Group (FinVolution). Established in 2007, the New York Inventory Change-listed fintech has spent practically 20 years refining the digital basis of recent credit score programs.

The group has efficiently prolonged its footprint past China with localised fintech platforms in Indonesia, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Its “mortgage facilitation” mannequin bridges licensed monetary establishments and near-prime debtors, serving to lenders attain new buyer segments as soon as deemed too pricey or dangerous.

At the moment, FinVolution connects over 36.6 million customers with 134 monetary establishment companions, with cumulative transactions exceeding US$157 billion.

On the forefront of those initiatives is Lei Chen, Vice President of FinVolution Group, an instrumental determine whose work sits on the intersection of innovation and inclusion, serving to monetary establishments in rising markets lengthen credit score safely to these as soon as past their attain.

Constructing the Digital Spine of Fashionable Credit score

In rising markets, monetary establishments face a twin problem: reaching underserved debtors whereas managing danger and compliance in fast-evolving digital landscapes. FinVolution’s reply is a full-stack, AI-driven credit score know-how platform that helps all the lending journey, from acquisition to danger management and customer support.

The group’s basis in information and automation runs deep. Since launching its first credit score scoring and anti-fraud system in 2008 and forming a devoted AI workforce in 2016, FinVolution has steadily constructed some of the complete digital credit score infrastructures in Asia.

Drawing from its expertise in China, FinVolution has efficiently localised its full-stack digital credit score answer throughout rising markets, tailoring algorithms and onboarding fashions to native information realities.

“With practically 20 years of credit score tech expertise and a replicable operational playbook, we may also help them onboard customers effectively, handle dangers successfully, and keep totally compliant with native rules.”

On the core of this ecosystem lies an AI danger engine that analyses borrower profiles in actual time, assigning credit score strains and pricing selections inside seconds. This intelligence has helped raise the proportion of high-quality debtors to over 80% of its consumer base.

Subsequent, on the entrance finish, FinVolution’s in-house advertising and marketing platform, Octopus, automates and optimises cross-channel outreach, utilizing AI to generate greater than half of all marketing campaign content material. By connecting to main promoting APIs similar to Ocean Engine, Tencent Adverts, and Google, Octopus serves as a unified promoting, technique, and analytics hub.

It tracks efficiency throughout the total buyer journey, routinely adjusts focusing on methods, and may create and launch advert supplies in batches, primarily based on real-time suggestions.

The group’s proprietary chatbot, BLU AI, brings a brand new dimension of intelligence to buyer interplay. Deployed throughout practically 40 fintech platforms in seven nations spanning Asia, Latin America, and Africa, it helps seamless communication in 5 main languages: Chinese language, English, Spanish, Bahasa, and Tagalog, alongside a number of Chinese language dialects.

With a speech recognition accuracy of 95%, BLU AI now handles greater than two million calls every single day, enabling real-time, human-like conversations that bridge cultural and linguistic divides. It additionally additional improves fraud detection by analysing linguistic and contextual cues throughout a number of languages.

“Our edge lies in our know-how depth — notably in fraud management, danger decisioning, and consumer progress. We complement banks by increasing their attain whereas preserving danger controllable, constructing sustainable and mutually reinforcing partnerships.”

Moreover, within the Philippines, FinVolution operates JuanScore, a licensed Particular Accessing Entity beneath the Philippines’ Credit score Data Company (CIC). JuanScore consolidates credit score information masking practically 70% of the underserved inhabitants and helps greater than 50 proprietary localised danger management fashions.

AI-Pushed Fraud Management Throughout Markets

FinVolution’s fraud prevention system attracts on behavioural alerts, linguistic cues, and contextual information throughout a number of languages to detect and cease suspicious exercise in actual time. Lei Chen defined the significance of doing so,

“The rise of generative AI has lowered the barrier to stylish fraud — cloned voices, deepfakes, and artificial identities have gotten widespread.”

Again in 2023, FinVolution additionally recognized a spike in deepfake-based face swap assaults in its Southeast Asian markets. Fraudsters used manipulated movies to try to bypass the KYC programs of its lending platforms.

In response, the group deployed a proprietary detection algorithm that achieved 98% accuracy in flagging these makes an attempt, highlighting how AI innovation is changing into important to defending digital lending ecosystems within the area.

In 2024, FinVolution’s AI engine intervened in additional than 7,000 suspected circumstances a day, blocking over 26,000 rip-off makes an attempt and stopping practically RMB 370 million (S$67.7 million) in potential losses. It demonstrated how know-how can apply information science to ship measurable, real-world safety for customers.

The system can also be evolving to counter rising types of fraud. Lei Chen added,

“Past know-how, we actively form the ecosystem too, internet hosting two consecutive algorithm competitions on deepfake detection with conferences like IJKAI and CIKM to advance industry-wide innovation.”

Charting FinVolution’s Street to World Scale by 2030

FinVolution’s expertise and scale now place it among the many main credit score know-how innovators shaping inclusive finance globally.

By 2030, FinVolution goals for half of its income to come back from worldwide markets, increasing its footprint nicely past Asia into areas the place the promise of credit score inclusion stays untapped. The group has recognized 4 key traits that can form this subsequent section.

Firstly, the following section of progress shall be pushed by smarter AI fashions that faucet into various information and LLMs to raised perceive and serve new debtors. Subsequent, consumer journeys will turn out to be more and more frictionless, powered by biometric KYC and real-time occasions.

Thirdly, regulatory agility will play a significant function in guaranteeing innovation strikes in keeping with sturdy shopper safety. According to these elements, there shall be a powerful demand for inclusive credit score, particularly in underbanked markets. Lei Chen added,

“We imagine collaboration between fintechs, banks, and regulators will speed up monetary inclusion, with fintech gamers bringing the know-how, banks the size and belief, and regulators guaranteeing sustainable growth.”

FinVolution shall be among the many featured firms on the Singapore Fintech Pageant 2025, the place Lei Chen will communicate on AI Functions in Credit score Finance.

His session at SFF will discover how AI and LLMs are remodeling consumer progress, fraud detection, danger evaluation, and clever operations, driving better accuracy, effectivity, and smarter decision-making throughout shopper finance.

Featured picture: Edited by Fintech Information Singapore, primarily based on a picture by Juan J. J. Labrador on Freepik